In the wake of terminating the communications director for Denver Public Schools in February, district officials apparently began requiring certain employees to sign confidentiality agreements, The Denver Gazette has learned.

The issue came to the forefront during the board of education’s public comment meeting on Monday, when Will Jones, the former executive director of communications, talked about the practice.

“This isn’t Coca Cola with their secret recipe,” Jones told The Denver Gazette Monday. “This isn’t KFC with their 11 herbs and spices.”

Officials with Colorado’s largest school district defended the new policy.

“Denver Public Schools prioritizes the safeguarding of student and employee information,” Scott Pribble, a district spokesperson, said in an emailed statement. “Numerous employees, including those in student services, human resources, legal, communications, and IT, require access to confidential data and sign NDAs to remind them of their obligations under privacy laws.”

While it is unknown how unusual or pervasive this practice is, education experts The Denver Gazette spoke to believe the Denver Public Schools policy is an outlier.

Superintendent Alex Marrero declined to comment.

A confidentiality agreement or non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is a legal contract designed to protect confidential or sensitive information. While typically invoked in business to protect trade secrets and proprietary information, government agencies are increasingly mandating that employees sign non-disclosure clauses, as previously reported by The Denver Gazette.

Pribble noted that the district’s use of non-disclosure agreements does not “prevent employees from speaking out” under the Federal Whistleblower Protection Program.

Critics said the agreements effectively silenced employees — some of them whistleblowers calling out malfeasance or misconduct — from ever letting anyone know what happened in their cases, and had the potential to bury evidence and prevent investigations of crimes, discrimination, sexual harassment and wage inequality.

Last year, the governor signed into law a measure that bars state and local government agencies — as well as school districts — from requiring current or prospective employees to sign a non-disclosure agreement as a condition of employment, with some exemptions.

The law came on the heels of a Denver Gazette investigation in 2022 that found that, in the past three years alone, dozens of state employees who faced discipline for alleged misconduct were instead given lucrative send-offs and assurances of the government’s silence through non-disclosure deals. The Denver Gazette also uncovered dozens more examples where state employees agreed to non-disclosure deals for payments of as little as $2,000, with little public record available to explain why.

In all, The Denver Gazette found the state had inked more than 80 settlement agreements with its employees since 2019, totaling more than $4 million in taxpayer-funded payouts, each with a non-disclosure clause preventing them from discussing it with anyone.

The law allows for exceptions, such as preventing employees from revealing sensitive information, such as proprietary business dealings or security information. It also allows for an employee to request a non-disclosure agreement in order to protect their privacy — but not as a means for covering up any underlying misconduct or criminal behavior.

‘It definitely seems novel’

On Feb. 7, district officials offered Jones $40,716 — or roughly 25% of his salary — to resign. Doing so, however, would have required Jones to release the district from any legal disputes arising from his nine years with Denver Public Schools.

Jones said he was not on a performance improvement plan, had not received any negative job performance reviews and is eligible for rehire.

“I was blindsided by the fact that despite doing good work, my good work wasn’t enough,” said Jones, 57.

Jones refused to sign the separation agreement.

It is unclear how many employees have been asked to sign a confidentiality agreement. It is also uncertain how widespread or novel Denver’s new policy is.

The Denver Gazette reached out to school districts across the Denver metro region to inquire about the use of confidentiality agreements.

Only JeffCo Public Schools and Cherry Creek School District responded.

Neither school district requires staff to sign confidentiality agreements.

The newspaper also inquired with the Colorado Association of Superintendents and School Administrators, as well as the Colorado Association of School Boards (CASB).

“This is not something that we believe is a widely used practice, but it is also not something that CASB tracks,” said Bryce Reedy, a Colorado Association of School Boards spokesperson.

After requesting The Denver Gazette submit via email questions about the district’s use of confidentiality agreements, officials declined to answer, leaving questions about when and why the new policy was necessary and how many employees have been compelled to sign.

Board President Carrie Olson said she was made aware of the policy but did not recall when it was implemented nor by whom. While calling the policy “standard business practice,” Olson said teachers are not asked to sign NDAs.

“The protection of private student and employee data is important, and NDAs are one small step we can take to protect our students and staff,” Olson said in an email.

Olson referred additional questions about the policy back to Marrero, whose team declined to answer.

“The runaround the community has received while seeking the truth further illustrates how broken the chain of command is,” said Steve Katsaros, a founding member of Parents Safety Advocacy Group, or P-SAG.

To the group, the board has, metaphorically, declined to look over Marrero’s shoulder, saying complaints about him are operational and beyond their scope — and then district officials will defend their actions, saying the complaints are related to policy, which is under the board’s purview.

“Don’t just trap us between your policy and your operation,” Katsaros said.

Theresa Peña — who served eight years on the Denver school board, four as president, from 2003 through 2011 — called the confidentiality agreements “nonsense.” Such agreements, Peña said, were not in place when she served on the board of education.

Will Trachman, general counsel for Mountain States Legal Foundation and former deputy secretary in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, said NDAs typically limit employees from talking about the circumstances surrounding their departure.

“It definitely seems novel,” Trachman said. “The idea that a public institution would want to hide damaging information about itself cuts against public trust.”

Formed in 1977 and headquartered in Colorado, Mountain States Legal Foundation is a nonprofit law firm dedicated to defending and expanding constitutional rights.

The way Trachman sees it, the taxpayer payout Denver Public Schools was willing to dish out to Jones suggests the former communications director likely has a story to tell.

“Forty thousand dollars really indicates that he had juicy stuff,” Trachman said.

This article includes previous reporting by senior investigative reporter David Migoya.